Fashion, dictates that women should own a basic black dress having usually a circular, U-shaped or Vee shaped neck. The appearance of the same dress may be altered for different functions by the use of jewelry but no matter how much the jewelry may be changed, the appearance of the basic black dress remains unchanged and in order not to give the impression that one owns only one dress for certain types of functions, a woman may have a number of dresses all basically the same black dress but each having a distinctive appearance from the others by the use of different front pieces which are permanently attached to the dress. Having several dresses of the same basic design but differing only by distinctive front pieces is expensive and can also create storage problems.
Dresses with removable collars are well known. However, the collar is usually removable for laundering purposes only and there is no intention that it be capable of altering a single dress so that it appears to be a variety of radically different dresses.